The Return Of Belinda's Birth Father! (Now That She's, You Know, Rich And Famous) AKA "It's Everything But Partytime"

Hey, so remember Belinda's birth father? You know, the one who abandoned her family when she was about seven years old - just about the age where it would be the most traumatic? Not the alcoholic who beat the shit out of her; that was her stepfather. You've got to keep the crappy father figures straight. Well, in all likelihood, Belinda had probably forgotten about her own birth father too. Until one evening in the summer of 1982, that is. From Lips Unsealed:

...I had received word through our record company's office that a man claiming to be my father wanted to me meet at our show in Baton Rouge. Apparently he had told local press there that he was my father, explaining he had been shown a photo of me as a little girl in the Vacation tour program and it matched a photo he kept in his wallet.

Sure, buddy, and I'm the tooth fairy.

Reluctantly, I agreed to meet him after the show. Then I had to work through the anger I began to feel toward him for handling a matter as private as our reunion in such a public forum. I didn't like the way he made a big stink out of it in the paper. On the bus, as we arrived in Baton Rouge, I kept saying, "It just isn't cool."

I was angry with him for more than talking to the press. I harbored long-standing feelings of resentment and hurt toward him for disappearing without any explanation when I was little, never sending child support to my mom or making contact on birthdays and holidays to see if I was alive. I also chafed at the nerve he had coming back into my life now that I was famous.

How could I trust any of his motives?

"Hi Belinda, so nice to see you! Oh, you're a big rock star now? What a surprise! Say, let's get together and catch up! Maybe you can buy me dinner?"

I ran through various scenarios of what seeing him would be like. Each one gave me the creeps. I wished I hadn't said yes.

My stomach was in a knot through the show, especially toward the end when I began to think about confronting my father. He had brought his new family, a wife and two daughters. Afterward, as they were ushered backstage, I locked myself in our dressing room and snorted coke till I rendered myself emotionally numb and stupid enough to face him, not that I was any good at expressing my emotions anyway.

There you go. That's how you prepare yourself for an awkward family reconciliation, folks.

At our reunion, I was friendly to everyone, probably too friendly and trying too hard in order to compensate for being loaded. My father took me aside and tried to deliver what he must have thought was a heartfelt explanation of why he left - basically his side of the story. As soon as he began to blame my mother, I tuned him out. I pled exhaustion and ended the evening.

Some people just know how to get on your good side.

However, they wanted to see me again before we left and so all of us met the next morning for breakfast and hung out for a spell afterward. This time, I was hungover instead of high, but still pleasant. As we parted, my father's daughters, the ones with whom he replaced me, said they loved me.

"I love you!" they called.

Waving good-bye as they got in their car and drove away, I thought, How can these people love me? They don't even know me.

Good question, Belinda. Very good question.

In the film version of Belinda's life, the song that needs to be playing on the soundtrack during this particular scene would have to be "It's Everything But Partytime." A rare Jane/Gina collaboration, the sixth track on Vacation exudes an eerie, hallucinatory atmosphere that the Go-Go's never quite replicated anywhere else in their catalog. Humming away in the background is either a very odd synthesizer or some heavily processed backing vocals, but I can't tell which - and that's cool! You can practically hear the drugged-out exhaustion seeping through the speakers. "It's Everything But Partytime" is like if the Go-Go's tried to make a Pink Floyd song. On the lyrical side, Jane apparently laid down a challenge for herself: to see if she could write a song where every word ended in "ing":

This is the place for celebrating
This is the crowd that's fascinating
This is the time for concentrating
To hear some words worth translating

He's rapping 'bout his meditating
She's dying for some medicating
And though I shouldn't be complaining
What's lacking here is entertaining

We're all looking for a good time
But what we get is empty rhyme
When everything's right but nothing is fine
It's everything but partytime

Talk about decorating
A room that needs sophisticating
When conversations become straining
No one's good at interest feigning

According to Belinda's typically erudite pre-song comments in a November 1982 Berlin concert clip, "it's a song about parties - not good parties, bad ones." But that last couplet right there ("When conversations become straining/No one's good at interest feigning") could pretty much serve as the final word on Belinda's little inadequate family get-together. Hell, the phrase "When everything's right but nothing is fine" could probably be her career manifesto. I mean, here's your birth father, finally willing to be a part of your life after all these years, you're band's on top of the world, and yet, underneath that smiling, water-skiing exterior of yours ... well, it's everything but partytime.

Mods And Ends: The Jam And Their Four UK #1 Hits

Raise your hand if you know what a "mod" is. Put your hand down Jimmy, you're just trying to pull my leg. Right, that's what I thought. See, in order to explain what the "mod revival" was, first I would have to explain who the "mods" were - a task that is probably beyond my capabilities. Something about scooters, quaaludes, soul music, and Keith Moon. It doesn't really matter, just as long as you know the important part, which is that the music was good.

Well, the music was good the first time around, and it was almost as good the second time around. Which brings me to the Jam.

"The who?" you say. No, actually the Who were one of the original mod groups, not one of the mod revival groups. I'll be here all week. But seriously, mention the Jam to most Americans and they're likely to give you a blank stare in return. I think it's fair to say that few British groups have ever experienced such a discrepancy between their UK success and their US success as the Jam. Normally I'd use this factoid as an opportunity to bash the taste of my stateside peers, but honestly, with the Jam, I kind of see what the deal was.

The Jam may deserve the title of "Most British Band Ever." They were more British than Mary Poppins, Harry Potter, and Paddington Bear combined. Let's face it: no one can understand what the hell Paul Weller is saying. Not even Paul Weller can understand what Paul Weller is saying. And when you do understand it, the lyrics are stuffed with slang and jargon and they make no sense. Also, I know the Jam were trying to revive the classic British pop of the mid-60s, but compared to the Beatles, the Who, and the Kinks, a lot of Jam songs aren't really that ... catchy. I mean, they're catchy, but they're not catchy. "Stayin' Alive" - now that's catchy. For a band that supposedly excelled at the three minute pop single, a lot of their songs kind of sound to me like drunken, two-chord football chants. I actually like the Britpop bands the Jam inspired more than the Jam themselves. And I know people have accused Oasis of ripping off pre-existing songs, but the Jam sure did a lot of that sort of thing themselves. That said, there are about six or seven Jam songs that I really like, and when I like a Jam song, I definitely like it.

The Jam were one of the core members of the "Class of '77," which included the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Buzzcocks, The Damned, Wire, Generation X, and ... am I forgetting anybody? Funny how, out of all those groups, the Jam went on to achieve the kind of chart success usually reserved for Bucks Fizz and Shakin' Stevens. For whatever reason, Paul Weller (otherwise known as the Modfather) just seemed to have his palm lovingly placed on the crotch of the British public. Which is interesting, considering he spent half of his time insulting it, but they're gluttons for self-loathing.

The Jam were like the Police, if the Police had never made it through Customs at Heathrow. They both were trios with one main singer-songwriter who completely overshadowed the other two members, they both started out in the punk scene in the late '70s but ended up branching out into more eclectic territory, they both became superstars in the early '80s but broke up at the height of their popularity. The difference? The Police wanted to sound like they were from someplace cool like Jamaica, and the Jam wanted to sound like they were from some shitty town in industrial England somewhere.

Like the Police, at first the Jam pretended to be punks just so that they could "make it," and then they gradually admitted that they were actually mods. By 1978, Weller's songwriting started including phrases such as "a pint of Wall's ice cream" and "toffee wrappers and this morning's papers." Add in the exploration of more carefully crafted production techniques, as well as the band no longer hiding their instrumental prowess, and you've got the default spokesmen for a generation of British youth, or something to that effect. Highlights from this late '70s period are many, but in a pinch I'd go with the haunting anti-racism mini-epic "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight," the forlorn "Strange Town," and its surreal, folky B-side, the "The Butterfly Collector."

By the time 1980 rolled around, the Jam were on fire, but if you'd think they managed to top the charts by somehow compromising their sound or their lyrical stance, well, you would sorely be mistaken. "Going Underground," their first #1 hit, boasted some of Weller's most bitter, vitriolic, and politically caustic lyrics yet. Essentially, this song is his very artful and poetic response to Thatcher's political ascension; in other words, "Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy". Kerry voters, this one's for you.

Some people might say my life is in a rut
But I'm quite happy with what I got
People might say that I should strive for more
But I'm so happy I can't see the point

Something's happening here today
A show of strength with your boy's brigade
and I'm so happy and you're so kind
You want more money, of course I don't mind
To buy nuclear textbooks for atomic crimes
And the public gets what the public wants
But I want nothing this society's got

I'm going underground (going underground)
Well let the brass bands play and feet start to pound
Going underground (going underground)
Well let the boys all sing and the boys all shout for tomorrow

Some people might get some pleasure out of hate
Me, I've enough already on my plate
People might need some tension to relax
Me, I'm too busy dodging between the flak

What you see is what you get
You've made your bed, you better lie in it
You choose your leaders and place your trust
As their lies wash you down and their promises rust
You'll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns
And the public wants what the public gets
But I don't get what this society wants
I'm going underground

We talk and talk until my head explodes
I turn on the news and my body froze
These braying sheep on my TV screen
Make this boy shout, make this boy scream!

Q: Can you top the charts by railing about how much you loathe society and wish everyone in it would just get lost? A: If you're the Jam, you can. Also: I like Bruce Foxton's little "bass rumble" homage to the end of "And Your Bird Can Sing."

Speaking of Revolver, the first thing anyone ever says about "Start!" is that Weller nicked the bass line straight from "Taxman." This is true, but he also nicked the choppy guitar part, and the guitar solo, which people don't point out as often. Basically "Start!" is sort of an early form of sampling. It's not a cover version; it's a new song which is heavily indebted to a pre-existing song. That's fine with me, but the thing is, if you're going to rip off an old song, your new song better be just as good, or even better, than the old song. All "Start!" makes me want to do is go listen to "Taxman." I mean, if you're going to sample "Pastime Paradise," you better come up with "Gangsta's Paradise," you know what I'm saying? The lyrics, however, concerning the intimate struggle for interpersonal communication, are worlds away from the lyrics of "Taxman" and might actually be the most interesting feature of the song:

It's not important for you to know my name
Nor I to know yours
If we communicate for two minutes only
It will be enough
For knowing that someone in this world
Feels as desperate as me
And what you give is what you get

It doesn't matter if we never meet again
What we have said will always remain
If we get through for two minutes only
It will be a start!
For knowing that someone in this life
Loves with a passion called hate
And what you give is what you get

The Jam already possessed a '60s American R&B influence "once removed," given that the original mod groups of the '60s were obsessed with '60s American R&B, and the Jam were obsessed with the original mod groups. But by 1981, Weller was cutting out the middle man and trying to go straight to the source. However, as Elvis Costello or the English Beat also demonstrated, enthusiasm for a genre doesn't necessarily endow one with the ability to convincingly perform said genre. Keep in mind that most soul singers don't sound like they have a corned beef sandwich stuck in their mouth. And so the Jam's version of R&B comes off as kind of strange and awkward, but I find it oddly compelling. On "Town Called Malice," Weller stole the bass line from the Supreme's "You Can't Hurry Love" (hey, if you nick the Beatles, you might as well nick Motown while you're at it), and as with "Start!," the original may have been stronger than the song it inspired. On the other hand, the Supremes' lyrics certainly never read like this:

Better stop dreaming of the quiet life
Cos it's the one we'll never know
And quit running for that runaway bus
Cos those rosy days are few
And stop apologizing for the things you've never done
Cos time is short and life is cruel
But it's up to us to change
This town called malice

Rows and rows of disused milk
Stand lying in the dairy yard
And a hundred lonely housewives
Clutch empty milk bottles to their hearts
Hanging out their old love letters on the line to dry
It's enough to make you stop believing when tears come
Fast and furious
In a town called malice

A whole street's belief in Sunday's roast beef
Gets dashed against the Co-op
To either cut down on beer or the kids new gear
It's a big decision in a town called malice

The ghost of a steam train echoes down my track
It's at the moment bound for nowhere
Just going round and round
Playground kids and creaking swings
Lost laughter in the breeze
I could go on for hours and I probably will
But I'd sooner put some joy back
In this town called malice

I know I'm quoting a lot of lyrics, but not only are the Jam's lyrics pretty good ("Stop apologizing for the things you've never done"?! "A hundred lonely housewives clutch empty milk bottles to their hearts"?!), I need to paste them here or otherwise you'd be lost. Trust me. At any rate, despite some of my misgivings, ultimately I think "Town Called Malice" does a splendid job of capturing the spirit of of early '80s England in a way that few songs ever have. Not that I would know, I guess. That just seemed like a fun thing to write.

I do know that, as far as Britain was concerned, the Jam could do no wrong, but by 1982, Weller was getting fed up with the limitations of the Jam, the other two guys were probably getting fed up with Weller, and so the band released "Beat Surrender" as a "farewell" single. It feels to me like Weller's attempt at making a "Land of 1,000 Dances" or an "Uptight (Everything's Alright)," but it came out sounding more like the theme from Laverne & Shirley. At this point, the song could have been three minutes of Weller passing gas and it would have reached #1, but it's not exactly one of my favorite Jam singles.



"What are some of your favorite Jam singles, Little Earl? You know, maybe like, some of the ones that didn't reach #1?" Funny children, I'm glad you asked, and I can't wait to tell you all about it, but you'll have to wait until next time.

The Goombay Dance Band and Nicole: Germany Invades Britain ... With Cloying Folk Music!

Where Hitler failed, German '80s musicians succeeded.

While Kraftwerk may have brought the more modern side of German music to the British public, two other artists managed to bring the village hootenanny side of German music into the UK charts. According to Wikipedia, the Goombay Dance Band's music was "a mixture of Caribbean soca or calypso and western pop." Or, to put it another way, "Seven Tears" might be the "Fernando" of the '80s. Although I suppose it doesn't sound particularly "German," listening to this song, for whatever reason, makes me want to put on a pair of lederhosen and build a cuckoo clock.



By contrast, listening to Nicole's "A Little Peace," Germany's first Eurovision Song Contest winner, makes me want to frolic in a fresh, dew-covered meadow with the Von Trapp family. Seriously, where did they find this girl? Nicole is like the perfect vision of everlasting Aryan purity.



But, just as I'm about to blame Germany all over again for the slaughter of millions, the beatific sound of Nicole singing "I feel I'm a leaf in the November snow/I fell to the ground, there was no one below/ So now I am helpless, alone with my song/Just wishing the storm was gone" fills my ears and makes me forgive all. Oh Germany, how can I stay mad at you?

Play it Again, Zrbo: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

You may recall that back in 2009 I wrote a fairly long review of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Recently I played through the game again and after re-reading my review I still have many of the same thoughts. It's still a masterpiece - I would go ahead and call it the most ambitious game ever made - but that doesn't mean it's the best or even most enjoyable game. I'd describe it more as really interesting.

Game director/producer/writer Hideo Kojima is still in desperate need of an editor. I spoke in my review of the outrageously long cinematic cutscenes that the player has the... um.. delight of getting to watch. It's true that part of watching these scenes are what gives the game it's charm, and yes, Kojima at least occasionally gives you something to do during these cinematic sequences (such as being able to view a flashback from a previous MGS game, or being able to take over a video camera), but it doesn't stop them from being occasionally interminable. I realized how quickly I got tired of Drebin, the arms dealer who acts somewhat like the Cheshire Cat (and who looks suspiciously like Wesley Snipes). Each time you defeat one of the game's bosses, Drebin calls up to deliver some overly long monologue on how the boss got the way she was and what she represented. Each story is overly detailed and long winded. They're a total bore and the explanations are frankly, just kind of silly. Here's one if you really feel like watching.

Drebin's back... sigh

Kojima's tendency for overly long and unnecessary explanations was most notable to me during the final movie-length cinematic that follows after you beat the game. For the entire game your character, Solid Snake, has been trying to figure out what the villain's big plan is. It's a completely over-complicated, overwrought mess that I won't go into here. By the end Snake's figured it all out, you watch about a full hour long cinematic that includes all the various characters, with each character given plenty of time to have their piece and say goodbye and then the credits finally appear to roll... Then the game drops a surprise by cutting to yet another cinematic, and brings back a character who at this point should be completely, irrevocably dead, who then proceeds to explain to you yet a whole other very different explanation of the events that just transpired during the game. My mind was so fatigued with explanations by that point that I barely followed anything this character was saying, I just wanted the game to be over. Someone has uploaded the entire shebang to Youtube, which you can watch here (skip to minute 57 to get to the fake credits).

I think part of the problem here lies with the fact that for all intents and purposes, Metal Gear Solid 4 was supposed to be the grand finale to the series, and since Kojima didn't plan on coming back to these characters, he wanted to make sure that each one of them got to say something and that anything that needed to be said was said.

And, inevitably, for whatever reason (money? fame? boredom?) Kojima has now gone ahead and announced Metal Gear Solid 5. Of interest is that instead of keeping long time voice actor David Hayter as the voice of Snake, Kojima has brought on board Keifer Sutherlund as the new voice. Now, Kojima is notorious with playing mind games with his fan base (MGS 2 is basically just one big mind fuck), and I know myself and a few others believe that this is essentially all a long con and that David Hayter will be there in some form or another.

So that's it. Metal Gear Solid 4 is an extraordinary game. The cutting edge graphics have been surpassed by this point, it's funny how they actually look a little dated to me now. The soundtrack is still phenomenal, but I went through that in my original review. I'll leave you with the opening cinematic of the game, with Snake's now infamous monologue (at least among gamers) on how war has changed, set to the beautiful "Love Theme":

M*A*S*H, Michael Jackson, and Kraftwerk (??) AKA Songs From The '70s That Became UK #1 Hits In The '80s

The United Kingdom, as I mentioned earlier, is much smaller than the United States, at least in terms of geographical size - if not in spirit. The point is, imagine a song suddenly becoming popular in Texas. Probably happens all the time. Maybe some local DJ suddenly hears "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" for the first time in his life, and decides to play the hell out of it. But it would never hit #1. You know why? Because the rest of the country would sit there and say, "Texas, what the fuck?"

Well, imagine a country where local DJs revived old, obscure singles, but there was no one else around to say, "Britain, What the fuck?"

While filming M*A*S*H in 1970, director Robert Altman realized he needed a theme song:

Robert Altman had two stipulations about the song for Mandel; first, it had to be called "Suicide is Painless", secondly, it had to be the "stupidest song ever written". Altman tried to write the lyrics himself, but found that it was too difficult for his 45-year-old brain to write "stupid enough". Instead he gave the task to his 14-year-old-son, Michael, who apparently wrote the lyrics in five minutes ... During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the 1980s, Robert Altman said that his son had earned more than a million US dollars for having co-written the song while he only made US$70,000 for having directed the movie.

Fast-forward ten years. I'm sure the M*A*S*H TV show was still popular in May 1980, but why did "Suicide Is Painless" suddenly top the UK charts at that precise moment? According to Wikipedia, it was "championed by BBC Radio 1 DJ Noel Edmonds." That's it? I don't even think something particularly unusual took place in relation to either the TV show or the film at that time. The final episode, which once held the record for most watched television program in U.S. history, didn't even air until 1983. And the version of the song in the TV show was instrumental.



I mean, it's a lovely song and everything, but it oozes early '70s California singer-songwriter folkiness and I can't imagine what it must have sounded like on UK radio sandwiched between "Call Me" and "Xanadu." Sure, England, whatever. Why didn't some DJ just champion the Brady Bunch theme while they were at it? Three's Company?

After the massive success of Off The Wall, Michael Jackson's little old record company, Motown, decided to re-release some Michael Jackson solo song from 1975 that nobody really cared about the first time around. But maybe the British public thought, "What's this? A new Michael Jackson song? Even though it kind of sounds seven years old? Let's make it number one!" At least American audiences were a little more savvy; the song only peaked at #55 over here.



Kraftwerk were no strangers to fluke Top 40 hits. The last thing they ever expected was for their 22-minute, pioneering electronica track "Autobahn" to peak (as a single edit) at #25 in the U.S. and #11 in the UK. But at least "Autobahn" became a hit shortly after the band released it. When "The Model" appeared on The Man-Machine in 1978, well, big whoop. Somehow or other it ended up as the B-Side to 1981's "Computer Love," some random BBC DJ probably thought it was the bee's knees, and it shot to #1.

Of course, Kraftwerk were so "ahead of their time" that a Kraftwerk song from 1978 probably didn't sound all that different from a Human League or a Soft Cell song from 1982. Granted, I know their first language was not English, but these lyrics make ABBA sound like Elvis Costello:

She's a model and she's looking good
I'd like to take her home, that's understood
She plays hard to get, she smiles from time to time
It only takes a camera to change her mind

She's going out tonight but drinking just champagne
And she has been checking nearly all the men
She's playing her game and you can hear them say
She is looking good, for beauty we will pay

She's posing for consumer products now and then
For every camera she gives the best she can
I saw her on the cover of a magazine
Now she's a big success, I want to meet her again

All right, who was it? Was it Ralf? Or maybe it was Karl? Whoever was responsible, let me start by pointing out a couple of things: "champagne" does not rhyme with "men," and "magazine" does not rhyme with "again." Plus, you need to add an "out" between "checking" and "nearly"; no one "checks men." And maybe it's just me, but why does it feel like they kept running out of words in the middle of their lines, so they just threw a comma in there, tried to add an extra sentence, and hoped no one would notice? "'She's a model and she's looking good/I'd like to take her home' ... crap, that's not enough words, I need something else ... ah, what rhymes with good?"

Vacation: Recycled Beauty And The Beat Leftovers ... But You Say That Like It's A Bad Thing!

And so the Go-Go's basically slapped together a bunch of Beauty and the Beat leftovers and called it an album. Well yeah. But an album of Beauty and the Beat leftovers sounds pretty good to me! Vacation is the Go-Go's' Strange Days, their More Songs About Buildings and Food, their Communique. It's a sophomore album by a band that had a long gestation period, a deep concert repertoire, sudden success, and plenty of unused material left over.

Although I'm sure there are some weird, wily fans out there who just want to be contrarian and will say otherwise, let's get real here: Vacation is not as good as Beauty and the Beat. On the surface, all the same winning elements are there; the album even sports the same producer (Richard Gottehrer). It's hard to put my finger on it, but the magic just isn't as ... potent. As Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes, "the album has an appealing, radio-ready sound, but it's at the expense of the giddy sense of fun that made Beauty and the Beat such a vibrant record." It's missing that certain ... hunger, that certain ... urgency. While no one would mistake their debut for progressive rock, it was, in its own way, a kind of a concept album. Vacation just feels like a bunch of unrelated songs.

But disappointing Go-Go's albums are like disappointing days at summer camp: even when they're bad, they're good. Erlewine gives the album three stars. I'd go with four-and-a-half and call it a day. In their 2004 album guide, Rolling Stone gave it one-and-a-half stars, which is just absurd. A sub-par Go-Go's album is like a sub-par Velvet Underground album: there are only so many. Although Erlewine writes that "half the album is padded with filler," I can honestly say that, on an individual basis, I like every song on Vacation. And yet, I rarely actually sit down and listen to the album as a whole.

What does the lead singer have to say on the matter? From Lips Unsealed:

Unlike Beauty and the Beat, I liked Vacation when I first heard a mastered version of the entire album. I thought it was a good, strong, fun effort with one caveat: I hated the way my voice sounded. I could hear where I had difficulty singing and felt guilty that I had spent too much time partying and hadn't given it my all.

In other words, "I thought it was a great album, except my voice sounded like shit and I couldn't sing for shit and I was just a big, raging fuck-up and I felt like shit. Other than that, it was great!"

For reasons that I can't quite fathom, "Get Up And Go" was released as the second single from the album. To these ears, it mines the same Bo Diddley beat the Go-Go's had already mined to better effect on "How Much More" and "You Can't Talk In Your Sleep (If You Can't Sleep)," but hey, somebody at I.R.S. must have liked it. I think the public agreed with me, though, since the song only peaked at #50 (question: if a single peaks at #50, would you consider that a "hit"?). There was also, as Belinda puts it, "a hideous video with me wearing an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt and headband, a look that predated Flashdance - yuck." The clip used to be up on YouTube but it looks like someone has "blocked it in [my] country on copyright grounds," or possibly on "embarrassment grounds"? Instead, here's a clip from Solid Gold, featuring Belinda in her Sheena Easton phase (and here's a version of the song with audio that doesn't sound like it's coming from the apartment next door).



"Girl Of 100 Lists" is a Jane number that Belinda found really cute and clever but the rest of the band thought was kind of wimpy and juvenile. The song is probably all of those things. It's the kind of subject matter that people who didn't really know about the Go-Go's would assume was the main subject matter of every Go-Go's song, although to be fair, the list-keeping protagonist does seem to be tearing through men at an unhealthy rate:

Ghetto blasters, phony jewels
Cathedrals, castles, making up rules
Trashy novels and leather gloves
This is a list of the things I love

I am the girl of 100 lists
From what shall I wear
To who I have kissed
Check items off
Let nothing be missed
Sing I to myself and my 100 lists

Pick up your laundry, doctor's at ten
We're out of toothpaste, rehearsal again
Stop by the bank and cash my pay
These are the things I must get done today

Ricky and Danny and Terry and Jim
Dean lasted six months, don't forget him
Perhaps some day this list will end
Till then I tally my gentlemen friends

This particular YouTube clip has excerpts from some sort of hilarious Go-Go's fanzine comic strip called "Motel Madness" ("C'mon Go-Go's, this is important. You've got to go the mall! The mayor's wife is expecting you!" "You lured us here under the pretense of a pajama party and now you tell us this! C'mon, girls, let's split!").



"Beatnick Beach" was another one of Belinda's amusing attempts at writing lyrics, but it lacks the despondent edge of "Skidmarks On My Heart," and with its campy '60s references ends up being a little closer to "We Got The Beat." As with that song, I think Gina manages to elevate "Beatnick Beach" through the sheer power of her energetic drumming. The opening "One, Two, G-O, G-O!" chant may be the most cartoonishly girl power-ish moment in the band's entire discography:

Dance to the poetry
It's gonna be just you and me
We'll groove on that groovy beat
It'll be boss keen neat yeah

The gang they'll all be there
Join the fun and don't be a square
We'll lip sync a go-go
Just like the Lloyd Thaxton show yeah

Beatnik Beach
It's really neat
Limbo down
Hit the ground

Put on your paisleys
Put on your black beret too
Join all us beatniks
Nothing better could happen to you yeah

Well, keep working on it BC. Like all good Go-Go's albums, Vacation ends on a dreamy, desperate, and slightly delusional note with "Worlds Away," which was name-checked to nice effect by Bret Easton Ellis in Less Than Zero. I can definitely see Clay, the novel's tortured protagonist, lounging by the poolside, strung out on coke and alcohol, staring into the crystal-clear water, trying to figure out whether he last slept with a boy or a girl, zoning out to this song on his headphones:

Walking around it's clear
I'm worlds away
Thinking with only half my mind
Found myself wanting
To be sleeping
To be dreaming
To be worlds away

Slip into bed the sheets are
Cold and smooth
My tension melts to a quiet warm
Find myself waiting
To be sleeping
To be dreaming
To be worlds away

I wanna be worlds away
Apart from the day to day
I know I'll be okay
When I get worlds away
Worlds away
Worlds away

There are a couple of other great songs on Vacation I need, and I mean need, to talk about, but I've decided to work them skillfully into a few of my upcoming posts. In the big-screen movie version of Lips Unsealed (which you know I must some day make), there are certain songs that are just tailor-made to be playing on the soundtrack alongside specific moments in this woman's life. For Belinda Carlisle, you see, life and art were one and the same.

Bucks Fizz: If Only ABBA Had Been British, And Only From The '80s

You know, the original ABBA were great and everything, but there was just something ... missing. For years, I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Then finally, it hit me. You know what they needed? They needed to be British.

Like ABBA before them, Bucks Fizz rose to fame by winning the Eurovision contest. Unlike ABBA, they did it by incorporating a tacky skirt-ripping routine into their performance. Released in 1981, "Making Your Mind Up" sounds more like ABBA circa 1974 than ABBA circa 1981. I mean, they nailed the style to a T; they were just ... a little bit behind?



Their next #1 hit, 1982's "The Land of Make Believe," sounds more like ABBA circa 1978 (think "Take a Chance on Me" or "The Name of the Game"), but hey, at least they were working their way a little closer to the present, right? Maybe at this rate they would soon catch up to ABBA circa 1982. Amusingly, Bucks Fizz's lyrics might actually be more simplistic than ABBA's, which, given that Bucks Fizz didn't even write their own material, and that ABBA managed to do so despite their native language not even being English, is really saying something. Here the band extols the virtues of the world of imagination:

Stars in your eyes little one
Where do you go to dream?
To a place we all know
The land of make believe

Shadows
Tapping at your window
Ghostly
Voices whisper, "Will you come and play?"
Not for all the tea in China
Or the corn in Carolina
Never, never ever
They're running after you babe

Run for the sun little one
You're an outlaw once again
Time to change, Superman
Will be with us while he can
In the land of make believe

This TopPop clip sadly cuts off the dopey spoken word portion at the end, where some child actress fresh from "There's No One Quite Like Grandma" tells us enchantingly, "I've got a friend who comes to tea/And no one else can see but me/He came today, but had to go/To visit you, you never know," but in its defense, it does include a shirtless black bodybuilder, a mysterious juggler, and a lifetime's supply of dry ice.



I'm not sure if "My Camera Never Lies" finally caught up to ABBA's contemporary sound, or was more of a prime slice of Aerobic Rock, sounding more like Olivia Newton-John or Sheena Easton. I'm also kind of getting a Styx/"Mr. Roboto" vibe.



True story: I downloaded a Bucks Fizz Greatest Hits album (why not?), and I have to confess, some of their smaller hits are actually pretty good slices of shitty, disposable pop. "If You Can't Stand The Heat" is the song that someone finally wrote in order to take advantage of the phrase "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen," and it also boasts a chorus that Roxette would have undergone an Ingmar Bergman marathon for. "Talking in Your Sleep" is a highly faithful and yet strangely effective cover of the Romantic's American hit.

In other words, you like your pop big, stupid, and catchy? Bucks Fizz may be your band.

Shakin' Stevens: If Only Elvis Had Been British, And From The '80s

Americans may have invented '50s rock 'n' roll, but we seem to have gotten over it. For some reason, Great Britain has romanticized and venerated the genre with a passion has been directly inverse to the size of its original contribution. Maybe music that, for us, seems quaint and passe, seems exotic and glamorous to our Transatlantic cousins. I guess it wasn't that unusual in the late '50s to like rock 'n' roll in America, but it was sort of a whole statement of personal identity in England. Still, how do you explain Shakin' Stevens?

Shakin' Stevens was a relatively straightforward rockabilly revivalist who performed competent cover versions of slightly obscure oldies. He wasn't a New Wave artist. He didn't do anything surprising, or offer much of a modern twist on the genre, or even write much of his own material. And he had four UK #1 hits.

"This Ole House," originally a hit for Rosemary Clooney in 1954, was obviously not inspired by the long-running Bob Vila home improvement show of the same name.



"Green Door" was originally a US #1 hit for Jim Lowe in 1956. According to Wikipedia, "An oft-repeated urban legend has developed saying the song refers to London's first lesbian club (1930-1985) which was in Bramerton Street in Chelsea." If Shakin' Stevens was aware of this interpretation, he certainly didn't show it.



The zydeco-flavored "Oh Julie," which I find somewhat more inventive and a little less derivative than his other material, was a number Stevens actually wrote himself. See, if only Stevens had realized earlier on that he needed to be the "rockabilly/cajun revivalist," he might have made it over here.



Or maybe he could have given Paul McCartney a run for his money in the synth-rockabilly Christmas market. "Wonderful Christmastime" or "Merry Christmas Everyone"? Pick your holiday poison.

"Shaddap You Face" and "Japanese Boy" AKA I Guess It Was OK To Stereotype Italians and The Japanese Back Then

Mexicans? Nope. Jews? Probably not. Blacks? I wouldn't suggest it. But apparently, as Joe Dolce and Aneka demonstrated, it was perfectly acceptable in the '80s to string a bunch Italian or Japanese stereotypes together and make a hit song out of it.

Joe Dolce was an American from Ohio who moved to Australia and released "Shaddap You Face" in 1980. The lyrics, as well as Joe's delivery, make fun of Italians. And ... that's it. That's the whole song. There's no moral, no life lesson, no spiritual epiphany. It's just a bunch of Italian stereotypes. Didn't Weird Al do this better with "Lasagna"?



"Shaddap You Face" might have been tailor-made for something like Dr. Demento's show, where it was played frequently in the US. But how do you explain the song topping the charts in the UK, Australia, and several other countries besides? According to Wikipedia, "The original release sold over 6 million copies and has remained the most successful Australian-produced single in Australian music history for 33 years straight, with sales of over 350,000+ copies." Some audiences are too easy.

Slightly more understandable, but arguably more tasteless, is Aneka's "Japanese Boy." And no, Aneka was not her real name:

Written by Bob Heatlie and produced by Neil Ross, the song was recorded by Scottish folk singer Mary Sandeman. Realizing that the name didn't fit the song, they decided to come up with a name to put to the single. Leafing through the telephone directory, they came upon the name of Aneka.

Umm ... isn't that just some ersatz, quasi-Japanese-sounding name? Why not just call her Fuji, or Yamaha, or Iwo Jima while we're at it? And didn't they just compose some ersatz, quasi-Japanese-sounding melody to go with it? Why not just have her sing, "Me build steleo system and eat flied lice"? I mean hell. My roommate's Top Ramen Cup O'Noodles is more authentically Japanese than "Japanese Boy."



Or maybe this was just Britain's revenge for World War II? We won the war, so now we get to insult your defeated nations with tacky, politically incorrect '80s pop songs?

Belinda And The Ugly Dodger Boyfriend - Part I

Mike Marshall, outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers, 1981-1989. Career stats: 148 home runs, 530 RBIs, .270 batting average. National League All-Star, 1984. World Series champion, 1988. Boyfriend of Belinda Carlisle, 1982-1984.

Yes, long before Matt Kemp and Rihanna, there was Mike Marshall and Belinda Carlisle. From Lips Unsealed:

One night I received an unexpected call in my hotel room from a young man who said his name, Mike Marshall, and then paused in a way where I could tell he expected me to recognize who he was. I didn't.

"I play for the Los Angeles Dodgers," he said.

I still didn't recognize his name, but I knew the Dodgers. As a girl who was never able to get the football player in high school, I realized I had something even better on the line: a professional ballplayer. Not just any old ballplayer either. He was an L.A. Dodger.

I don't know if it was boredom or intrigue, or a combination of both, but I was interested. When I asked him to tell me about being a Dodger, he explained he was considered a good player, and that he'd actually won the minor league Triple Crown the year before and was now in the major leagues, which was pretty exciting.

"So are you good?" I asked teasingly.

"I hit a home run my first time up to bat at Dodger Stadium," he said.

"Yeah, but are you good?"

Oh, Jesus. This is going to end poorly.

The first call turned into a nightly occurrence that I looked forward to. I liked the back-and-forth volley with this strange man. Without him knowing, I tooted up during the call and spewed what I described as my coke rap.

Our conversations quickly moved past playful flirtations and turned into more intimate explorations. It was like a game of Truth or Dare - a drug in and of itself.

I had no idea what Mike looked like or that his teammates had nicknamed him Moose for his thick, lumbering physique. He was a Dodger; that was intriguing enough ... We finally arranged to rendezvous before our show in Santa Cruz. When I saw him for the first time, I didn't think he was handsome or cute. I don't know what image I had in mind, but he reminded me of Lurch, the butler on the old TV series The Addams Family.

However, as I repeatedly told my friends later on, almost as if I needed to convince myself, he was a Dodger.

No, see, Belinda. As any self-respecting Giants fan can tell you, that is exactly why you don't want to date him. And of course he was ugly. He was a Dodger. Come on. Dodgers players torture little girls, exploit third world labor, leave the toilet seat up, and basically do every horrible thing a human being can possibly do.

Still, I can't exactly picture Belinda dating Jack Clark. In other words, if you were determined to date an ugly baseball boyfriend, Belinda, I'm glad you chose a Dodger.